But first I want to apologize, everything I needed was just sitting and sitting on my laptop and I don’t know why it took me so long to get this post finished. But I'll make it up with you, because here is my superlong-there's seems to come no end to it- extensive review! (If you're not really a reader, you could also watch the pictures and judge for yourself)
I will be including a new 'reviewing' approach for this review, called 'Their Word Against Mine'. Which means I'll take information from the Zoeva website and compare it with my own observations.
The Outside
What's in it is what really counts, but I still want to show you the packaging of this product.
Colors
Black Lace
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| As Found on Zoeva.de |
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| As Photographed by Me |
Zoeva:
Black as the night, a must for purists. Deep, matte black with a hint of blue.
Me:
No way this is matte black. First of all: deep matte black + a hint of blue = not possible. Matte means no glitter or shimmer, this has blue glitter. And deep means really, really black and not black-blueish. So I'm sorry but you should have called it Black & Blue, which I think would actually be quite a cool name and I bet it would sell just as good. But this, this is just confusing and a tiny bit misleading imo.
When you first look at it, you would think that a hint of blue is a very mild way to put it. I'll tell you that I honestly thought they had send me the wrong eyeliner, it looks very blue instead of black in its pot. But I'll admit it was not that blue when I swatched it and applied it to my eyelids, it is more a grey-ish black to me. But then again (I'm really being a bitch right now :p) if you add blue to it, it should be apparent on the eyelid else it has no use right? I can hardly see any of the blue glitter when I put it on my eyelid. Now you might say that that's a good thing and that it is indeed a matte black. But when I applied it it looked more like a greyish black to me than a deep black and that can either be the color itself or it is the thin coverage, I'm not quite sure.
Verdict:
When you say deep matte black and a must for purists I expect deep black and nothing else, it shouldn't even have a 'hint' of blue in it or look greyish. I've really got to say this, but what's so hard about making a real black eyeliner? There is hardly a way of going wrong, since black is black and nothing else, there is no such thing as a dark black or a light black for that matter. So I'm sorry Zoeva, but I'm going back to my real 'Pure Black' gelliner by Coastal Scents, which is cheaper btw, even though it's dried out, it deserves the title black way more than your deep matte black with a hint of blue.
Scroll down (quite far) to see a picture of me wearing the black eyeliner, you can see it's more greyish.
Velvet Flame
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| Zoeva |
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| Me |
Don't worry I'm not gonna be as cruel on this particular color as the black one. But I am being brutally honest, I'm not afraid to say what I think. I could praise this into heaven, but if it ain't true than what use has this review? You might as well just believe everything the Zoeva website says and buy it.
Zoeva:
An elegant shade, like a dark sandstone. Chestnut Brown with a hint of shimmer.
Me:
Perfect name! I really must say that. When I think of a brownish shade called Velvet Flame, this would be it. It is a very warm brown, as chestnut brown should be, which is a little more evident on the photo I took of it. Nonetheless I have not found that the redness in it dominates, so it could be very well used for an elegant look. But I'd rather use it so that it does pop out, so I would not choose the easy way fast and use this with browns. I'm actually quite curious to see how this works with a darker green look. And also one other thing: what I wouldn't give to have this color as a eyeshadow, I would love to combine it with black.
Verdict:
Leaves nothing to be desired. Exactly what I expected when I read the info on the site and saw the picture. Oh btw, the colors do look quite alike on the picture, but mine is a little lighter because I had to use flash due to the dreary weather.
Jardin
Zoeva:
Like an emerald between moss. Leaf green with a light shimmer.
Me:
Uh-oh, here we go again. Haha no just kidding it's not so bad. I'm not quite sure what to think of emerald between moss, I don't immediately visualize a certain colour. But maybe that's just me. I do know that when I see emerald I envision something shimmery or sparkly and that is indeed the case here. Then the leaf green part, I would personally call this dark sea-green. But hey, I see pink when others see brown so maybe I'm just a bit screwed up :P. But it is green, let's just adhere to that.
I find this to be a gorgeous colour and looking at it is almost enough for me. Almost, because that would be a waste of money and of product to just let it sit there being pretty in my make-up collection. But I'm afraid it will be sitting there for long periods at a time because I simply don't know what to do with this color. I still haven't found the right color(s) to match it with, which is a shame. It's also a bit darker than I thought at first, so I don't think I'll use it on my lower eyelid again in the future (I did that when I tried to make a look, that completely failed btw, with these eye-liners. But I'm sure I'll find the right place to put it and the right colors to match it with one day.
Verdict
Name could be better, but we understand it's a not so typical shade of green. So I'm letting Zoeva off the hook easy here. The color is extra-ordinary beautiful, but also extra-ordinary impossible, though I'm certain that one day I'll make a look that absolutely needs this green.
Swatches
There's one little important thing I have to say about these colors, in a pot, on your hand and on your eyes can be 3 very different things.
I put it on quite thick and didn't go over it a second time, so it's not the same effect you would have when you apply it precisely on your eyelid.
Applying, wearing and getting it off
Now I'm gonna talk about the Zoeva cream eyeliners in general, so what I say here counts for all three colors that I own.
Again, this is what Zoeva says about it:
Long-lasting effect - dramatically intense and vibrant colors
This smooth and easy-to-apply cream liner is perfect for creating a precise finish with excellent true color coverage that will stay in place all day. The pro-formula is long wearing, water-resistent and available in six luscious shades for plenty of options
And this is my view on it:
Applying
Easy-to-apply Zoeva says, well I'll tell you: I'm good, no I'm great with eyeliner, give me any kind, either a pencil, liquid, gel whatever, either an angled brush, a pencil brush, a flat liner brush or no brush at all I can make any line I want from straight to cat-eye to cleopatra look and it's slightly to not-at-all messy. But this is really the first eyeliner ever to give me trouble.
When I first put my angled brush in this eyeliner I almost went completely through the eyeliner, it's just that soft and thin! And at first I thought that was gonna be great, I was expecting the effect of a liquid eyeliner but with the control of a gelliner. Well I was wrong, terrible wrong. It is so soft that you have no control at all, you just glide over the lid and it ends up all wobbly when I do it. No biggy though, I'll just go in again to fix it. You'd think! When I go in again I take all the previous applied eyeliner with me (it's like you're putting it back on your brush again). And I knew what the problem caused immediatly, because it simply doesn't dry fast. And considering I don't want to wait too long before, no I don't even want to wait at all, to go back in again, this is not a big succes.
Also another effect of it not drying too fast is that when I blink the eyeliner ends up above my crease as well. So imagine this: you have to wait for it to dry before you can go in again, but you have to do it without blinking. Umh.. Now there is a way around it and that is tilting your head backwards, but the problem then is that I can't apply my eyeliner as well.
Also another thing is the coverage, I might have let it slip in the colours section of this post, but the coverage is quite light, even though the colors themselves are dark and I think it's because the eye-liner is so soft that it's also very thin, you smear it out real good, not much seems to stick to your eyelid in one swoop. You'd have to let it dry and apply over it again to get it thicker.
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| Way too wobbly for me |
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| Looks better here, but I'm really a perfectionist when it comes to eye-liner |
When it's on it stays on. So I guess long-wearing is completely true. But if it smears in the beginning when it's not completely dry yet, you're gonna have a major problem getting it right. And that brings me to the next part:
Taking it off
If you thought the drying was the problem, then wait till it's dried. Because like I just said, it ain't moving. It really is waterproof, I've got to hand it to Zoeva, but it's also cleansing-milkproof and soapproof, also tears-proof (I often find that when eyeliners don't move with water, they often do with tears. I know this not because I cry that much, but because I have sensitive eyes, so my eyes get watery real fast.)
Now, it's not everything proof. I don't have any eye-make-up-remover, simply because I never use it. So I used what I normally use to take of eye-make-up: olive oil, and it works wonders as usual.
Still I have to mention I can't get all of the eyeliner off, because some places are just very hard to reach. Normally I get that last part of when I cleanse my face with cleansing-gel or -milk, but it's not doing the trick with this eyeliner.
Okay, I have a little confession to make: I'm not a fan of waterproof eye-liners, because they're hard to get off and I use eye-primer anyway and that keeps on the eye-liner just as well but is still easily washed of with cleansing products.
Another small (tiny, I promise) thing
Zoeva says vibrant and dramatically intense. I'm torn about this, I keep thinking well the colors are dark, but is it intense? And is the problem the thin coverage or is it just the color?
But anyway, it's a shame it doesn't dry fast enough (at least for me), because you just take a lot of product with you if you sweep over it with your brush a second time.
And then one thing I haven't mentioned at all yet: I wouldn't use this for creating a smokey-eye, I never recommend cream/gelliners for that, but with this one making a smokey eye is not a possibility at all. BTW I find making a smokey-eye works best with very soft kohl pencils like the 24/7 Glide-on Pencils by Urban Decay, but cheap drugstore ones work just as great for that purpose.
Final Verdict
Since I've used so many words I'm just gonna use numbers now:
2.5 out of 5 for the Black, 3 for the others.
Okay a fast summary then (I can't help myself): Nice colours, except for the black, the other colours are very original and extra-ordinary(which some people will like, some won't) . Long-lasting & waterproof. Too soft, too thin, too little control and dries too slow, which are the main reasons they're not scoring so high in my book. For me the most important thing when it comes to eye-liner is the appliance part: if I can't get a neat line with it, it just doesn't work for me.
The Look
So I tried to make a look with these 3 colors, but I must tell you it didn't not turn out to be as I wanted it to. The control is practically non-existing, so I didn't get it where I wanted it and I didn't get it to pop out, but that was my own fault. No fixing is possible, because once it's dry there's very little you can do. So, conclusion: failure. Also the green eye-shadow I chose turned out to look very different on my eyelid than it did in my palette haha so I guess that's not the fault of the eye-liners either.
I will try again, because I'm not a quitter. The brown is definitely my favorite of these 3 though. Green really was the problem with this look when it came to matching colors.
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| Green turned out to be much darker than the brown, was not expecting that |
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| Doesn't look that bad here |
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| This is me btw :p Normally I'm not that discoloured or that pale, my stupid camera is to blame for this |
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